Noooooooooo - The fail

This pendant has taught me quite a few things.
First, it's easier for me to make an anti-clockwise spiral than a clockwise one. That's probably a right hander thing.
Second, don't feel safe before you have actually and truly completely finished something.
Third, I can be such a brute.
Fourth, sometimes a spiral just wants to stay a spiral.

So what is all of this about then?

I made a pendant the other day using half of a cut up ammonite and some copper wire and it turned out pretty cool. The obvious consequence was to use the other half now.
Of course it didn't look exactly like the first one. I made a different weave, the little spirals and the bail were in different spots on the pendant and the spiral following that of the fossil was a little bigger and not curled in as much. Things looked fine. The pendant was almost finished.
Just tightening and flattening those wires a bit more - CRACK!

What the .... no. Nooooo. But ... seriously now?
Yup. Seriously. The ammonite had several cracks. I mean, hey, only a few tiny bits had fallen out. Good to know that my wire frame held it safely, but ... seriously now? Broken? Now??

Of course my first thought was to toss the whole thing. Out of my sight, you .... you treacherous fossil! It's no excuse that you are millions of years old.
On the other hand I know I overdid it. I pushed you to the edge and you couldn't handle the pressure. It was my fault.

I decided to keep it as a reminder - maybe hang it on the wall or put it on a chain and on one of my teddies - but of course I needed to do something to make sure the parts really stayed together.
*cue ominous music* Glue. Oh dear. You know that glue and I have a somewhat shaky relationship. Granted, there was nothing here that I could mess up except maybe glueing myself to the pendant.
I applied glue to both sides of the pendant and let it dry.
Funny, the glue on the front of the stone had settled in a little groove in the middle that I hadn't even noticed before. I generously applied more glue until the surface looked smooth. Three layers later I still have that little groove showing and decided to leave it that way.
Now I just hope I have really learned something from this! ;-)

Tackle that stash - Entering the world of wire weaving

Due to a fall I haven't been able to tackle my stash in a while, but now that my wrist is starting to tolerate certain movements again, this has changed.
I had made two or three small attempts at basic wire weaving before to see if it was something I could incorporate in my designs.
The first pieces included a crystal and a faceted tiger's eye bead, now I wanted to see if I could also do something with a cab or a tumbled rock.
Doesn't look that bad for a start ...

Tackle that stash - A button??

I have never liked buttons. I tolerate them, but if possible I avoid them. Okay, that's not completely true. I never liked buttons on my clothes. There are beautiful vintage buttons, but the ones that I liked when browsing were always too expensive for me to just have them disappear in my supply drawers.
So when I read that the topic for a challenge in May was "use button/s", I declared right away that I was out. I'm a zipper girl. Sorry, guys. Not a button to use around here and I didn't feel like going shopping for one button.

May went by and still no button had crossed my path. June came and I didn't think about it anymore as the challenge was over, anyway (although we are quite cool about deadlines, we all have been late one or the other time). Until yesterday, that is.
I was playing around with my Little BigShot lens and randomly grabbed tourmaline beads from the shell next to my light tent which also holds some Swiss coins. I have not the slightest idea where they came from. I have even less an idea about the thing I picked up next. In fact I don't even know why I picked it up.
It was a button, and I stared at it as if I had never seen a button before in my life.
It was made to look like an old Austrian coin, 20 Kreuzer from 1826, and showed the double-headed eagle with "GAL.LOD.IL.REX.A.A. 1826" on one and  "HVN.BOH.LOMB.ET.VEN." on the other side of it.

That means Hungariae, Bohemiae, Lombardiae et Venetiae, Galiciae, Lodomeriae, Ilyriae, Rex A.A. = King of Hungary, Bohemia, Lombardy and Venice, Galicia, Lodomeria, Illyria, Archduke of Austria.
Some of that I knew by myself, but I had to google for the other ones (Lodomeria? - never heard that before).

This is not a treasure, but it was an interesting find nevertheless and again - where did it come from in the first place?? It's a pity I couldn't find out when this was produced, so instead of obsessing over its past, I started thinking about its future.
I held different wire colors against it and decided to use a dark copper tone for a wire crochet bezel. Tiny orange carnelian beads for a bit of color. And last but not least a bronze tone ball chain to pick up the brassy color of the button.

Voilà!

Tackle that stash - Beaded Tudor Rose pendant

First of all let me say this. I know that this pendant is not an exact replica of the Tudor rose. It is, however,  inspired by it.
The other day I made a pair of flower earrings that reminded me of Kanzashi flowers (which are actually Japanese folded fabric flowers) when I had finished them, and this time I wanted to see how I could make a variation that was maybe a little larger and more three dimensional.

I beaded it from silver lined red and golden seed beads and experimented with how to sew the individual petals together for the best effect.
At first I wanted to leave it at that, but you know me, I love my dangles on earrings or pendants, and this pearl drop makes such a great one.
I was tempted to add something green to it, but then I found it would have been too much here, especially because the green beads in my stash are also silver lined. This is one shiny pendant!

Tackle that stash - Stone Canyon Jasper pendant

I'm back! And what could be better to get back into blogging than a nice stash tackler?
To be honest there is little stash tackling in this pendant, though.

It's not the first time I am telling you that I am struggling with asymmetry. It's funny because there had been no struggle at all in ordering this interesting brecciated jasper. I came, saw, and bought.
Then I was carrying it around in my coat pocket for two weeks. When there's an order in my mailbox, I can never wait until I am upstairs, you know. I have to rip it open right there and then. As my veggie box arrived that same moment, I just shoved this and another cab into my pocket and kept forgetting to take them out.

Yesterday I finally remembered and just when I was about to bury them in the drawer with my other cabs - that have been waiting for too long to get out of there for good - I decided I'd give this a shot.
I turned the jasper this way and that way hoping it would tell me what it wanted.
The earthy colors called for copper wire and to pick up the browns from the stone I added transparent brown seed beads to the knitted bezel.

Next was the decision which way to turn the cab for the bail. I am always drawn to turn drop like shapes upside down and the fact that I love my dangles usually influences me to follow that urge.
The brown pearl was perfect with it.

Now which cab to choose next? Decisions, decisions!

Tackle that stash - The little hand

I have been thinking I should add a new category "Experimenting" to my blog. It might be interesting. Maybe a little creepy, sometimes frustrating, and possibly making you raise your eyebrows from time to time.
Experimenting is mostly about my wire crochet sculptures. A little face here, an eye there, a glove, an animal - the latest ones being two hands. A bigger one and now a smaller one.

Where is the stash coming in, you will ask. In the form of a beautiful blue bubble lampwork bead. See for yourself.

I already posted this picture on Facebook. You have no idea how difficult some wire creations are to photograph.
I'm not completely happy with the proportions yet, but after all this was a first attempt in this size. I'll be getting there, so stay tuned.

Tackle that stash - Fairy flower

It's so late already that I honestly didn't think I would make it today.
Just for fun I grabbed some wire and a lampwork bead and started looking for my 1.4 mm crochet hook. I have no idea how that had ended up in the waste paper basket, but I'm sure glad I found it. I hope my beloved 1.65 mm hook that has disappeared didn't take the same way at a former point in time.

I'll make this short. My first effort went into the basket my crochet hook had just found its way out of and the lampwork bead wandered back into the drawer.
I started over planning to make a wire knit ring. As you can tell, that did not quite happen. Instead the flower that started taking shape called for a different lampwork bead, a bigger one, and decided to be a pendant reminding of a sweet pea (I always loved sweet peas) ... or maybe a fairy flower after all?

My Queen Meffi

Six years ago I wrote a blog post about my boy Merlin.
A little over a year ago I lost Merlin's great love Meffi. Until now I didn't even want to talk about it, it usually takes me a while, but now I have a very special reason to share some memories with you.

Meffi came to us a few months after we lost the cat that had started it all, White Dude, the foreign exchange kitty. We picked her up at a farm. Actually I didn't pick her. I was sitting in the hay cooing over a litter of mostly black kittens with some white spots when my ex shoved her in my face instead. How could I have resisted that cute little nose? She looked adorable!
In fact we didn't know it was a girl, though. Even then she hated to be picked up and she was like an eel with claws. We named her Mephisto because she was such a little devil. That day she kept her tail very firmly tucked in and we thought it would be best not to stress her out too much. The next day, however, that tail went up and we found we had a Mephista instead.

It was still common then to let a cat get in heat once before having her spayed. Our boys were neutered, so the only problem would be to stand the noise and Meff rolling around on the floor.
I have never heard such a voice coming out of such a little cat. A cat in heat? It sounded more like a moose in heat! It was absolutely impossible to ignore her song, and Merlin went for it hook, line and sinker. With the whole show, too, neutered or not.
They stayed a pair until Merlin went over the Rainbow Bridge. Still with the whole show. Sometimes it was downright embarrassing to lie in bed when the lovebirds were there as well. Merlin was friends with all the others and they all loved him, but it was nothing compared to those two.

After Merlin was gone, things changed. Meffi didn't think highly of the others, especially not Ponder, no matter how much he was in love with her from the moment he entered our world. The Queen was not amused at his rowdy and childish behavior.
Then my husband left. As much as the boys had always been more attached to me, the girls had chosen him, but Meffi dealt with it easier than I had feared. She started to sleep on my head at night with my hand touching her fur. Not holding her, though. Meffi always needed the feeling of being able to get up and leave any moment. She was not a hugger like the boys, I already said that she had taught us from the very first day that she didn't appreciate to be picked up and held longer than a few seconds. It could turn her into a fierce furry octopus with thousands of claws. I have more than one fine scar to prove that and this is only from the occasions when there was no choice and I had to pick her up.
I also have a fine scar on my cheek from when she had been sleeping on me and Ponder suddenly decided he wanted to play. He jumped her, she jumped me, my glasses flew off my face, I spilled soup over myself and felt something warm running down my face. Never a boring moment here!

When Meffi got sick, the bond grew even stronger if possible. I would never have thought that I would be able to pill her and even give her sub q fluids every day. Not that she was apathic and sometimes she let me know very clearly that she wouldn't put up with my stupid ideas today, but in general we made a great team.
It is never an easy decision to let a beloved animal go and I'm not ashamed to say that once again I'm sitting here bawling. I miss her so much.

Of course I could go on and on and on, but now you may ask what that special reason of mine is to share all of this with you.
When I lost my Queen (a position she filled effortlessly here),  I knew that I wanted my friend Dawn to do what she already done when I lost Merlin.
Dawn's miniatures (click the link to see more) are amazing and beautiful. I asked her to make a miniature of Meffi, a necklace, and she did.
I can't express my feelings at the moment when I opened the parcel. I don't think I need to. Thank you, Dawn, thank you so much.

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

Tackle that stash - Cosmic spiral pendant

Don't ask me where the name comes from. Maybe I still had Donovan's Cosmic Wheels from my playlist on my mind or maybe the lampwork bead reminded me of a little planet with the pearl as one of its moons?
Fact is that the misty pink lampwork bubble bead has been an orphan in my drawer for too long and really needed to be made into something.

I haven't been working in wire for a while, so I set out to make a wire crochet rope and see where it would take me. Actually I wasn't even sure how far that spool of wire would get me. Would it be enough for a necklace? A bracelet?
Turns out that I didn't have to worry about that after the spiral idea popped into my head. I don't do asymmetry that often, but sometimes it's just appealing.

What do you see?

Tackle that stash - Nevermore

It has been years that I worked in polymer clay. The other day I made an attempt, but either was the clay too old or the toaster oven too weird, well, let's say it was pathetic, strange and eww. That's a story for a different post, though.

Today is about a portrait, my fondness for "shaped" bead loomed pendants, and a polymer clay charm.
The title may have given it away already or have you recognized him right away?

It's Edgar Allan Poe of course, accompanied by a polymer clay raven sitting on a black crystal.

The pendant is not in my shop yet.

Tackle that stash - Delicate Cantera opal pendant

You have seen this tiny Cantera opal before, in this post where I showed the magic world you can see in it.
As you know, tiny cabs or faceted stones are a bit of a challenge to use in wire knit or crochet. To do the opal justice, but also keep it safe in its bezel, I made very small knit stitches. That way I was able to only cover the matrix, but leave the window to the magic world open. Actually I keep staring into that window! I just love opals.

For that little bit of movement that I like so much I added a small amber bead dangle. It's a pity I only had one opal in that size, I think this would make a beautiful pair of earrings if I had two.

To compliment the delicate pendant, I crocheted a slim rope in the same color.

Tackle that stash - Under the sea

Isn't it sweet how things sometimes come together even if you have not expected it at all?
This time it was the color blue that pulled it all together.
First of all I found this dyed blue agate slice in my stash. The other day I had made a brooch with a purple agate slice in a wire knit setting. The irregular shape of the agates is easier to set in wire knitting, so that's what I decided on again here.

From there my muse took things into her own hands. I remembered the blue pearls in my drawer and as I like to do, I strung my wire with a whole bunch of them. As you can tell, though, I didn't need that many after all. My plan had been to crochet an extra edge onto the bezel and to fill it with pearls, but the shape of the slice seemed to call for a freeform edge.
That's when I began to see the ocean theme. I don't know what you see in this pendant, but to me it became part of a coral reef and I knew I wanted to have something else on there. I wracked my brain to remember if I might have hidden a fish or maybe a crab charm somewhere, and I was almost ready to go and look for charms to order - which wouldn't have gone together that well with the goal of using my stash - when I remembered my fishes by Melissa Vess. 

Among all of her beautiful beads of which I have not enough by far, Melissa's fishes have always been my favorites. I always felt her love of the ocean and diving made them even more special.
Unfortunately Melissa isn't a lampworker anymore which makes me think even more about how I use her beads in my work.
And there it was, a blue fish which matched the blue of the agate perfectly as if it was made to swim through this underwater world. Bingo!

This one of a kind pendant is available in my DaWanda shop now.

Tackle that stash - Classic elegance

If you make a bezel for a stone, there are three things you want. You want to compliment the look of the stone without hiding too much of it, you want the stone to sit safely in its setting and you want the piece to have your own style.

With wire crochet or wire knit it's not always easy to make sure the first two work together in the best way.
This last pendant I made features a dark green cabochon in a golden wire knit setting. It was the first time for me working on the edge in a way that not only shows most of the beautiful stone, but also a delicate golden border.
A lovely pearl is adding a little movement to the pendant - yes, I still am in "dangly mode"! ;-)

You can find this in my DaWanda shop now.

Tackle that stash - Crab agate in wire crochet setting

I love tie dye shirts. I have never dyed shirts myself, but I had two that I had got a long time ago at the Marin County fleamarket which was one of the highlights of each visit to California. Actually I still have one of them even if I only wear it at home now.

This hippie love probably attracted me to this stone, a crab agate which is just another word for a treated spiderweb carnelian agate. You can also find them called crab fire agate, but they have nothing to do at all with fire agate.
I can't even say how many years this agate must have spent in my stash.
No idea if it was the warm colors that made me pick it now - go away, winter! - but to enhance those summer vibes I chose an orange colored copper wire and teamed it up with beautiful brick red and topaz colored seed beads, leftovers from other projects, to crochet a bezel that looks different on both sides and so leaves the choice to you how to wear the pendant.

Let the sunshine in! ;-)

The pendant is available in my Zibbet shop.

Decades

This month's JAC blog carnival is about decades. Pick a favorite decade and tell us about it, make something in the style of your favorite decade or even in a favorite style of a not so favorite decade.
The task wasn't as easy at it may sound.
I was born in the 60s and still remember the mod style vividly. So much color! Or how about the classic elegance of the 50s or the rock'n'roll style? Let's be honest, though, I am totally in love with the style of the 20s and 30s. Art Nouveau and Art Deco are fascinating to me, design, architecture and fashion.

After thinking for a while I remembered Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a Scottish architect, designer, water colorist and artist. I had made a little wall hanging for a friend before that had been inspired by his work and featured a font that he developed, part of a chair design of his and the well known Mackintosh rose, and always had wanted to make more in this style.

This is my take on a Mackintosh design, a bead loomed pendant featuring the rose and the buds on a cream background, adorned with a fringe of beads and crystals. I put the pendant on a bronze tone chain for now, but I am thinking about getting a silk cord in a matching purple tone for it.
What do you think?

Mackintosh rose inspired pendant in my Zibbet shop

Please check out the other members' posts, too. I'll add the links as they come in.

The Crafty Chimp
Jewelry Art by Dawn 

P.S. If you want to know more about Mackintosh, visit the page of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society.

Once upon a time ...

... there was a necklace. It was finished, but then the artist saw that the pendant wasn't sitting perfectly, and the necklace got put away for the time being. From time to time it was taken out, but always put back until a better moment would come. The moment didn't come and the necklace lay in a drawer for a long time.

The waiting is over now which kind of makes my other WIPs hope that they have a chance to resurface again, too ;-)

This necklace with the sapphire pendant is crocheted and spool knitted from fine silver wire.
It is available in my Zibbet shop now.

Wire calling

With all the bead looming I have done recently my wire started to feel neglected and I heard it calling to me.

It will never stop being fascinating to me how different the feeling is if I pick up the bead loom or the crochet hook.
Once I get to the bead loom, I usually have a pattern ready that I have to follow and there are not many changes I make during the process.
The hook, however, lets me change paths in the middle of a piece. Although you don't see much of the wire here from the front, the back is built up from several randomly knitted layers which make the pendant sturdy and helps the crystals to sit right.

The pendant is now available in my DaWanda shop.

Windows #1

Lately I've been playing with bead loomed pendants of different shapes and with cutouts. I have done it for several HeatherCats and had so much fun that I just kept going.

This pendant has been my first "window experiment". The pendant is square and loomed from beautiful blue AB and galvanised silver beads, one of my favorite color combinations.
There's a cutout in the middle that obviously had to be filled, and I found the perfect filling, tiny peacock colored freshwater pearls.
This is just the beginning, you know. Stay tuned for more!

Available in my DaWanda shop

Khepri

I'll make it short. I knew about the scarab beetle pushing the sun, I knew the image of the scarab with the open wings, but I didn't know about Khepri.
Khepri is the Egyptian god associated with the scarab beetle. He was believed to push the sun across the sky and he was the one to bring up the sun again after the night was over.
Like I said, I made it short, very short.

Well, someone mentioned Khepri to me after seeing one of my pendants with a wire knit web all around the stone and inspired me to try this version.

Of course it is very stylized and you don't see the inspiration behind it without being told, but it's only the first one. I might get myself a scarab focal for the next one.

This pendant can be found in my DaWanda shop now.

A new HeatherCat or The moustache

I can almost hear you. "Wait. You told us HeatherCats don't have whiskers, and now what ... there's one with a whole moustache?"

Yup, there is, a very fine moustache even, obviously well cared for.

Heather was inspired by someone famous when she created this design for a stamp. Can you tell who it was?

****cat (no spoilers) in this silver and black version will be in my Zibbet shop soon, of course in the HeatherCats section.